Barenaked Ladies Blandly Beats At Hearts Of Fans

August 03, 1999|By DAVID DALEY; Courant Staff Writer

Now the devil doesn't pass through Canada often, but the Toronto Blue Jays are the only small- market baseball team with two World Series championships during the '90s, so he has to swing by occasionally.

On one visit, sometime after the Blue Jays last championship run in 1993, the devil was swilling Bloody Marys at a downtown Toronto Holiday Inn, waiting for a meeting with a former teen star named Alanis something-or-other, when he realized the band playing was just bland enough for modern-rock radio play.

The devil cursed in amazement. Hopelessly un-hip Hootie-esque frat- rock combined with the Dungeons & Dragons-like nerdiness of They Might Be Giants. He could work with this. So he bought them a round.

The devil began his pitch to the Barenaked Ladies with two words: Glass Tiger. You don't stand a chance without me, he said. And look at you guys. You're overweight. Your drummer has jowls like Richard Nixon. Where'd you buy those floral-print short-sleeve shirts? Just give me your souls, and I'll make you famous.

They took the trade, of course. The devil swapped the Barenaked Ladies his secret for success in the modern-rock `90s -- Novelty hits! Nothing but novelty songs! -- and indeed, thousands squealed for them at the Meadows Music Theatre Sunday night.

If there's a more likely theory for the BNL's success, somebody please explain. If bland, earnest types could be so popular without dealing with the devil, Al Gore wouldn't be 20 points behind George W. Bush in the early presidential polls.

As a frontman, singer Steven Page exudes all the charisma of the captain of the local bowling team doing karaoke. His two dance moves are a gut-first pelvic thrust -- almost charming the first time he does it, not so the next dozen or so occurrences -- and a karate kick. As songwriters, with their A to the C to the E approach, Page and Ed Robertson manage to make the Dave Matthews Band sound rhythmically daring.

Which, of course, is probably why they're so beloved among the Gap set. But watching their set Sunday, it was impossible not to wonder about the BNL's appeal. These kids, after all, would be mortified if, say, Dad made his beer belly move like that.

Basically, the band members make everything a joke, from themselves to their songs. They rattled off an impressive number of hits, all essentially jokey novelty tunes. There's the song about how all pop songs have been done before. There's the one imagining what their box set would be like. There's the one about how someone painted their old apartment after they moved away.

And in between the songs, more joke songs, some of them painfully rapped. These about being unpopular in high school (surprise!), making fun of Jehovah's Witnesses, and even, yes, the wonder of beans. Later, they came out dressed as Devo. Are we not bored?

Indeed, it was the bland leading the grand. Opening act the Beautiful South proved that without that deal with the devil, you can write the wittiest, most subversively sublime pop songs imaginable, and the kids will be playing hackysack in the parking lot until you get off the stage.